Good news for my fellow nerd fans out there: Joseph Gordon-Levitt will produce The Sandman, a screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman's graphic novel series. Highbrow geeks rejoice! Published by DC Comics, The Sandman is a series of graphic novels written by Gaiman and illustrated by various artists that ran from 1989 to 1996. As the Verge points out:

The Sandman comics tell the story of the Lord of Dreams, most often referred to as either Dream or Morpheus, a wiry, haughty personification of dreams themselves. After being held captive for 70 years, Gaiman's 75-issue run follows Dream / Morpheus as he adapts to the world he finds outside his prison and rebuilds his kingdom. The comics segue between horror and fantasy, and gained a dedicated following after the first issue was released in 1989. Their success helped to solidify the position of DC's offshoot Vertigo Comics by outselling Superman and Batman at the time.

Gaiman (@neilhimself, because of course), wrote of the series: "The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision." Sounds fatalistic and ambiguous and surreal and amazing!

It's not JGL's first venture into the dream world: he was, of course, one of the stars of Christopher Nolan's 2010 masterpiece of science-fiction and suit-wearing, Inception. Odds are that The Sandman will have a similar vast, cold and dark feel to it, which is just fine for Gordon-Levitt, who was also fantastic as Robin in Nolan's inimitable Batman reboot. Not to mention he was killer in last year's sci-fi time-travel feature Looper, in which he played a young assassin running from his older self trying to kill him.

As of now the project is at Warner Bros., with David Goyer on board to co-produce — Goyer wrote Nolan's Batman series, so the project has a lot of potential already. I'm excited to see how JGL, Gaiman and the rest of the cast (not sure yet whether Gordon-Levitt will star as Morpheus) will bring the apocalyptic, uncanny world of The Sandman to (half)life.